Ever wonder how yoga relates to justice and peace? Check out a blog post by Yoga District founder Jasmine on how our yoga practice can serve as self care and as a practice of peace in its own right. From teachings of former Harvard Professor Ram Das to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Emily Greene Balch, you’ll explore a few simple ideas about how everyday life is full of opportunities to practice peace.

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IS peace the point or the journey? 

Back in 2009 I asked Ram Das, former Harvard professor and author of Be Here Now (pictured here), how to love people who I considered political enemies. He told me:

“You’ll never find peace in the outside world. Just go inside, find peace, then become an instrument of peace.”

So next time you do some yoga, do it as an instrument of peace. Your practice is not just for you. It’s for everyone, everywhere, who deserves or needs that peace. It’s for peace itself.

Every time you practice in this way, it’s as if you’re making a little deposit in the universal bank account of peace. When you join a peace demonstration, when you are kind, when you eat vegan, when you don’t buy something you don’t need, when you speak truth to power, you’re making little deposits in the peace bank.

If you’re attached to achieving peace, you might find yourself upset with much of the results these days. But attachment to achieving peace isn’t the goal. Instead, like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Emily Greene Balch (pictured here) said, “Peace is the way.” So the goal is to peacefully fight for the fight for peace.

As always, thanks for sharing your practice with us, and please keep finding ways to contribute to peace. Be sure to do plenty of yoga as self care so you develop strong resilience to any ups and downs you have on the journey!